COVID-19 Coronavirus current events

younger unboosted people just aren't going for official testing.
unsupported speculation of the insulting "young people these days" kind, contradicted by your own anecdote

in Germany and the UK, you're obliged to report positive self-tests

if you have a job ("young & healthy"), I think it's unlikely you'd keep it secret
 
unsupported speculation of the insulting "young people these days" kind, contradicted by your own anecdote

in Germany and the UK, you're obliged to report positive self-tests

if you have a job ("young & healthy"), I think it's unlikely you'd keep it secret

But in Estonia, you can have a free anonymous test come back almost instantly as very positive, and then just go back home and live your life as you were (namely self-isolating, as we suspected we'd had it anyway, but wanted to make sure before committing to or cancelling a get-together), not on any record that could be used statistically (as I could visit any number of the facilities any number of times, and accumulate any number of results, whilst being but a single case (or a single non-case, depending on when I chose to waste everyone's time and test kits)).

Our privacy-lobby is very powerful. Anything that was considered a possible impediment to people getting tested was removed. Of course, you then have to rely on everyone being properly socialised and both using this facility and knowing how to behave on receipt of a positive, which was far from the case. This just means we gave all the demographic segments the ability prove how responsible they were, and entirely predictable demographics failed.
 
Presumably, the case rate paradoxon is because people more likely to be exposed are quicker to get boosted.
People more at risk being more likely to get boosted is called self-selection bias, and it needs to be addressed in well-designed studies.
Agreed. The booster was first recommended and first available for senior citizens and those with underlying medical conditions that make them more vulnerable. It seems possible that a lot of younger people heard that initial message and said "OK, then I don't need a booster." Nevertheless, the reported difference between boosted and not boosted is small compared with the unvaccinated.
 
unsupported speculation
as opposed to YOUR unsupported speculation?

of the insulting "young people these days" kind
i did not say anything like that.

contradicted by your own anecdote
sorry for being balanced.

in Germany and the UK
the article is about New York City

if you have a job ("young & healthy"), I think it's unlikely you'd keep it secret
really? somewhere in this thread is an article about unsalaried people going to work sick because they don't get sick pay.

here's another
Article:
Two-thirds of service workers surveyed in the months leading up to the Omicron surge said they did not stay home when they were feeling sick and went to work ill. The numbers highlight the precarious situation for workers without sick leave, Harknett said. They also show the pressure of chronic short staffing, threats from bosses and the possibility of losing pay that also causes people to keep going to work, she said.


as far as MY alleged speculation:
Article:
Am I required to report a positive result to local health authorities?

No, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but the federal agency recommends that people isolate and inform their health-care providers.
...

But a newly released national survey of nearly 11,000 people finds that 31% of those who tested positive at home for the virus that causes COVID-19 did not follow up with a more accurate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test at their doctor’s office or a testing facility, and thus are likely not captured in official data.

...
Their use is particularly frequent with people 18 to 24 years old, city dwellers, Democrats, and the well-educated, the Northeastern study found.

Researchers surmise that younger people just don’t go to the doctor as much and are more inclined to favor home tests. Higher usage among young adults also could be traced to the possibility that the coronavirus has been spreading more among younger people, or that they’re more likely to be exposed to it.

“In general younger people are engaging in more interactive behaviors, and they are at lower risk of dying if they get sick, but they are at higher risk of getting sick,” Lazer says.



i'll "contradict" myself again for balance (vs cherry picking data that supports my personal opinions):
Article:
New York City now has the data to exemplify this: While 77 percent of all city residents have received either the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot or two doses of the mRNA vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, only about 36 percent had received a booster shot as of Friday.
 
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Presumably, the case rate paradoxon is because people more likely to be exposed are quicker to get boosted.
It may also be that folks with a second booster feel safer against severe symptoms and so tolerate greater risk of infection as they go about their lives?
 
Wow! Those are daily deaths. Seems Australia are late comers to this "party".

Can anyone explain what is going on with Australia?

1659811265744.png
 
Wow! Those are daily deaths. Seems Australia are late comers to this "party".

Can anyone explain what is going on with Australia?
"We" managed very well in the early stages. Helped by firm political and bipartisan support. Small population, island geography. Easy to lock the doors. And strong cultural support of "we look after us" rather than "my rights are supreme". BUT strong restrictions could not be maintained even with both cultural and political support.

And we are strained in labour shortage limits due to work absences - affecting logistics of manufacturing and delivery. Supermarket shelves at least seemingly empty. More at nuisance levels - choice limitations rather than zero available. (Yesterday's example my wife had to go to an alternate shop to get eggs - and had to take the only size available.)

So with high vaccination rates, the epidemiological decision is "live with it". I have no additional insight into the high death numbers.
 
down in OZ covid vector settings public health controls & laws have pretty much expired or been removed, Mandatory vax for most work places dropped masks optional in public transport isolation not required for pos+ test or close contact.

We lost 594 per mill pop or 15,475 dead vs US 3,256 per mill pop - 1,090,289 dead..
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/10/14/australia-covid-regulations-autumn-wave/

It’s finally happened: Australia’s mandatory isolation periods for those infected with COVID-19 have, as of today, been scrapped.

While those who have tested positive for the virus can’t visit high-risk settings like hospitals and aged and disability care facilities for seven days post infection, there are no legal rules on staying away from public spaces, taking public transport or wearing a mask.
Content from External Source
 
@derwoodii
Best of luck, but in spite of my fully-vaccinated status I still avoid crowds, with reason. Here's an article on the new variants arising, different ones in different parts of the world.


It’s autumn again, which means COVID cases are on the rise.

But for the first time in the pandemic’s history, the variants that make up the mounting wave look drastically different, depending on where you are in the world.
In England, Omicron spawn BA.5.2 is the most prevalent variant, with a long list of competitors relatives vying for dominance. In the U.S., once globally dominant BA.5 is still leading the way. But it’s steadily decreasing as BA.4.6—dubbed “Aeterna” by some on the Twitterverse—rises, with BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 on its heels. And in Singapore, cases of XBB, or “Gryphon”—a combination of two Omicron variants that can evade immunity and antibody treatments—are surging.
Content from External Source
https://fortune.com/well/2022/10/15...s-fall-winter-pandemic-epiidemic-endemic-xbb/
 
Article:
Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation page was updated with a note saying that as of Nov. 23, the platform would no longer enforce its policies against spreading misleading information on the virus and vaccines

“Nowhere near enough was being done to stamp out medical misinformation on social media previously; but this step, along with re-platforming voices who wish to sow confusion and increase mistrust in medicine, will do more harm,” said Jack Resneck Jr., the president of the American Medical Association, in a statement. He also urged patients to seek out accurate medical information, including from their own physician.

Jenna Sherman, a program manager at health information research nonprofit Meedan, said she worries other social media platforms follow suit and reduce their Covid-19 misinformation enforcement as well.

excerpted, as usual
 

China


Article:
Several local governments in China encouraged people with mild cases of COVID-19 to go to work this week, another sign of the difficulty the country faces as its rollback of virus-containment measures sets off a wave of infections — and a growing number of deaths.

The moves appear to be in response to worker shortages that have affected medical care and food deliveries.

They also reflect the the difficulty officials face in trying to revive an economy that was throttled by pandemic restrictions, and now that they have been lifted, is being slowed by workers falling ill.

China had long hailed its restrictive “zero-COVID” approach of lockdowns, quarantines and compulsory testing as keeping case numbers and deaths relatively low. Yet the policy placed China’s society and the national economy under enormous stress and prompted rare anti-government protests, apparently convincing the ruling Communist Party to heed outside advice and alter its strategy.

Now, unofficial reports suggest a widespread wave of new coronavirus cases, and relatives of victims and people who work in the funeral business have said deaths tied to COVID-19 are increasing.

China, despite fully vaccinating 90.3% of its population, has only given a booster dose to 60.5%. China needs to prioritize giving boosters, especially to those over 60, to avoid large numbers of deaths, Kang said.

Case and death counts in every country are thought to underestimate the true toll of the virus, but there are particular concerns in China. Chinese health authorities count only those who died directly from COVID-19, excluding deaths blamed on underlying conditions such as diabetes and heart disease that raise risks of serious illness.

The wording of "only" 60.5% boosted struck me, so I looked up comparison data.
Article:
coronavirus-data-explorer.pngcoronavirus-data-explorer-1.pngcoronavirus-data-explorer-2.png

Particularly the bottom graph suggests that China has delivered 3 vaccine doses in numbers comparable to European countries, but hasn't been pursuing additional boosters recently; England has obviously given many people second boosters (4th doses) this autumn.

Article:
At a press briefing on Wednesday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the U.N. agency needs more information on COVID-19 severity in China, particularly regarding hospital and intensive care unit admissions, “in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground.”

“Vaccination is the exit strategy from omicron,” WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said.

Ryan said the explosive surge of cases in China was not exclusively due to the lifting of many of the country’s restrictive policies and that it was impossible to stop transmission of omicron, the most highly infectious variant yet seen of COVID-19.

He said vaccination rates among people over age 60 in China lagged behind many other countries and that the efficacy of the Chinese-made vaccines was about 50%.

Ryan also suggested China’s definition of COVID deaths was too narrow, saying the country was limiting it to people who have suffered respiratory failure.

“People who die of COVID die from many different (organ) systems’ failures, given the severity of infection,” Ryan said. “So limiting a diagnosis of death from COVID to someone with a COVID positive test and respiratory failure will very much underestimate the true death toll associated with COVID.”

Even though China undercounts Covid deaths, the lockdown policies have kept these much below the rest of the world:
Article:
coronavirus-data-explorer-3.png
Screenshot_20221223-010439_Samsung Internet.jpg

One of the hypotheses expounded in 2020 was that lockdowns are a net benefit to the economy by keeping people healthy. Given the reports above, it'll be interesting to see how easing the restrictions affects the Chinese economy.
 
Dr Drew Pinsky is back fighting "official" Covid information (again).
About 2 1/2 years ago, he fervently denied that Covid19 was even a public health concern, akin to the flu, was overblown, and would have less impact than the Flu. He later admitted he was wrong, and apologized. (see my post HERE)

Now he's back with almost weekly podcasts and LIVE YouTube streams. Here was today's title, a few hours ago.....
Drew.png
13,000 views and 179 comments in 4 hours. He does have a following. He also seems very logical, but only occasionally voices his doubt about certain claims. He continually emphasizes that he himself is not a vaccine denier, because he recommends vaccines to his clients who are in the at-risk population, including Cov19 vax and boosters. But then he makes sure to point-out that his views on Covid vaccines and boosters is slowly (or swiftly) changing, and is intrigued by his guests and their ideas/claims, and believes that perhaps all vac/boosters should be halted, and await further study.

His podcast does seem to be primarily one-sided conversations -- guests are consistantly on the side of mRNA vaccine opponents and deniers of the CDC guidelines and it's personnel (Faucci). Add to that, his co-host is Dr Kelly Victory who some would call a full-fledged vaccine denier/opponent and anti-masker. She managed to find her way onto QuackWatch (LINK) . and she believes there is a big gov't and pharma cover-up. She is also a firm believer that the recent "sudden deaths" rumors, are true.......so-much-so, that when she was asked, "Why hasn't the media reported on this ?" , she replied, "but heck, the media DOES know about it, they are told not to report on it !!" (paraphrased by me).

Actually let's go to the episode where she said that..... (watch just 60 seconds of this clip)....

Ed Dowd Exposes "Sudden Adult Deaths" Increase & New mRNA Data w/ Dr. Kelly Victory – Ask Dr. Drew


Source: https://youtu.be/ZAoIYJKMEgc?t=1546

...to which I commented,
"Mrs Kelly claims that even the 'media' knows the "real truth" and therefor, for some reason refuses to report on it. Wait, now reporters (even independent ones) are towing a vaccine lie ? This idea that "even the reporters know it" is the famously overused excuse for nearly every conspiracy theory......and simply makes no sense. If there was to be a GIANT cover-up involving hundreds of thousands of people as well as many Gov't agencies + private corps.....this would be a REPORTER'S DREAM to expose it."
 
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she replied, "but heck, the media DOES know about it, they are told not to report on it !!"
I don't doubt people are told not to report it (those who try to), simply because it's misinformation, and reporting it would ruin the reputation of any serious news outlet.
 
I don't doubt people are told not to report it (those who try to), simply because it's misinformation, and reporting it would ruin the reputation of any serious news outlet.
That is certainly possible, but on the off chance that any publisher/editor making such decisions is following this thread, I'd suggest that an even better policy would be to investigate such erroneous claims thoroughly including gaining a good understanding of the position of those pointing out that they are wrong, and then report fully on what you have learned. Ignoring misinformation is not a good strategy, simply labeling it as such and moving on with minimal understanding is not all that great either. Clearly understanding and explaining the situation may not work either -- it is hard to unfool people determined to be fooled -- but would be worth a try.
 
That is certainly possible, but on the off chance that any publisher/editor making such decisions is following this thread, I'd suggest that an even better policy would be to investigate such erroneous claims thoroughly including gaining a good understanding of the position of those pointing out that they are wrong, and then report fully on what you have learned. Ignoring misinformation is not a good strategy, simply labeling it as such and moving on with minimal understanding is not all that great either. Clearly understanding and explaining the situation may not work either -- it is hard to unfool people determined to be fooled -- but would be worth a try.
your suggestion still gives misinformation a platform

I'm not going to second-guess any editors, and I wouldn't suggest they have "minimal understanding"

to me, the best thing to do is to report on correct facts
 
Minimal understanding conveyed, as opposed to acquired. I can't gauge how much understanding they have acquired but not passed on.
 
Minimal understanding conveyed, as opposed to acquired. I can't gauge how much understanding they have acquired but not passed on.
an editor doesn't get paid for teaching people who want to report Covid misinformation

editors get paid for producing news
 
an editor doesn't get paid for teaching people who want to report Covid misinformation

editors get paid for producing news
Dang, never had so much trouble being understood -- or perhaps having so much trouble understanding. Editors do indeed get paid to produce the news. I'd say part of that is to make sure that they, and/or their reporters, understand the facts of the news and pass that understanding along to their readers/viewers. Sometimes that happens, which is great, but often it does not on stories about COVID science, UAP, bigfoot sightings, etc. In some of these cases, misinformation is passed on, as with coverage of the Navy UAP vids by the NYT and others, touting how inexplicable they were before making much of an effort to see if they could explain them. In other cases they label misinfo as misinfo based on an authority telling them so, but when they don't explain explain it clearly at least hints that they do not understand the story well enough to tell it.

I think it is useful to have information on WHY disinfo is wrong; why erroneous claims are in fact erroneous, why the egregious conspiracy theories make no sense. I don't think MetaBunk is doing a disservice to the truth by taking on this role, I don't think this site provides a platform for disinfo. If more editors, reporters, etc. did that, this site would be lot less busy -- and I mean, I'd miss y'all, but on balance their being less bunk left to flourish un-answered out there would be a Good Thing.
 
Old news that I just ran across:
Article:
To make the discovery, Marc Eloit, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and his colleagues in France and Laos, took saliva, faeces and urine samples from 645 bats in caves in northern Laos. In three horseshoe (Rhinolophus) bat species, they found viruses that are each more than 95% identical to SARS-CoV-2, which they named BANAL-52, BANAL-103 and BANAL-236.

Last year, researchers described another close relative of SARS-CoV-2, called RaTG13, which was found in bats in Yunnan5. It is 96.1% identical to SARS-CoV-2 overall and the two viruses probably shared a common ancestor 40–70 years ago. BANAL-52 is 96.8% identical to SARS-CoV-2, says Eloit — and all three newly discovered viruses have individual sections that are more similar to sections of SARS-CoV-2 than seen in any other viruses.

Viruses swap chunks of RNA with one another through a process called recombination, and one section in BANAL-103 and BANAL-52 could have shared an ancestor with sections of SARS-CoV-2 less than a decade ago, says Spyros Lytras, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Glasgow. “These viruses recombine so much that different bits of the genome have different evolutionary histories,” he says.

The Laos study offers insight into the origins of the pandemic, but there are still missing links, say researchers. For example, the Laos viruses don’t contain the so-called furin cleavage site on the spike protein that further aids the entry of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses into human cells.

RaTG13 is the sample the Wuhan Institute of Virology had in their collection. Conspiracy theorists made it out to be the "smoking gun" it really wasn't. The Laotian discovery shows there really are more of these around.
 
The Laotian discovery shows there really are more of these around.
but don't they need a cleavage site to jump species? (p.s it's nice to add a date with old news)

Article:
Sept 2021 In evolutionary time, several decades separate these bat viruses—dubbed BANAL, because researchers found them in bat anal swabs—from SARS-CoV-2, so the new viruses could not have sparked the pandemic. But the study further expands the family tree of SARS-CoV-2 and raises new questions about how it may have arisen. And the BANAL viruses could well pose a threat to humans themselves, Wang cautions. “This virus could be SARS-CoV-3,” he says.
 
but don't they need a cleavage site to jump species?
do they?

anyway, this to BABAL-52 and RaTG13 equally (FCS=furin cleavage site):
Article:
The most closely related spike genes from bat CoVs BANAL-20-52 and RaTG13 (95% and 93% spike nucleotide sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2, respectively), RshSTT182 and RshSTT200, the Guangdong and Guangxi pangolin CoVs, and even the Zhoushan ZXC21 and ZC45 SARS-CoVs do not have an apparent S1/S2 FCS (fig. 1). These observations suggest that among sarbecoviruses, an S1/S2 FCS recently emerged in SARS-CoV-2.
 
Fascinating: Many on the Right are doing a loud victory dance...
drunk on the news that today FBI director Wray says (with "low confidence")
the origins of COVID19 "...are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan."

Evidently this tentative new theory is based on the best evidence the FBI now has.
Yay!
And some are now emphatic that the previous "best evidence the FBI" had was some
grand (but hard to explain) conspiracy.

But this time is definitive, ;P and the final word...for some reason.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-says-covid-pandemic-most-likely-originated-chinese-lab

Of course, many more government agencies still maintain that the best evidence is that
it transferred from animals to humans in a wet market in Wuhan.

I don't pretend to know which theory (if either!) is true, nor do I have any dog in that fight.

I hope that someday we know...but the Chinese were/are pretty secretive, so
I don't have a lot of faith that we will. I'm just disappointed that so much is being made
of one tentative "low confidence" theory, being celebrated over another "moderate
confidence" theory that some people rabidly opposed, for political reasons.
We don't know. Nor do we have great evidence for either theory.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pot...rector-wray-speaks-publicly/story?id=97535563
 
FBI director Wray says (with "low confidence") the origins of COVID19 "...are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan."
Republican Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump as Comey's successor, after he had worked for the DOJ during George W. Bush's first term.

The FBI's job is to look for perpetrators, so absent actual evidence, I believe this is a "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" situation (if not worse).

The scientific, genetic evidence has always been favoring a natural origin and spread; that hasn't changed.
 
How can you assert 'most likely' with 'low confidence'? They seem at odds with each other.
I suppose it could be something like

Wuhan Lab leak 18% chance
Bill Gates 17% Chance
Contaminated meat in market 16% chance
5G 14% Chance
US weapon 12% chance
It was the Jews 1%
Aliens / Bigfoot < 1%
etc
 
How can you assert 'most likely' with 'low confidence'? They seem at odds with each other.
it's a misquote

Article:
"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," he said.

Wray's comments came after a report in the Wall Street Journal, not independently confirmed by ABC News, that a new Department of Energy assessment has found the virus was most likely the result of a lab leak in Wuhan, but it did so with "low confidence," compared with the FBI's "most likely" finding with "moderate confidence."

I wouldn't put it as chances, but rather as error margins:
if you have a=11,b=12,c=13 with a +/-5 error margin, then c is most likely the largest value, but the confidence for that statement is low : assuming uniform distribution of the error, P(c>a)=63%, P(c>b)=55%, the combined chance P(c>a,b)=42% is lower than 50%.

Code:
program ideone;
var a,b,c:integer;
    pca, pcb, pcab: integer;
begin
   pca:=0;pcb:=0;pcab:=0;

   for a:=6 to 16 do
     for b:= 7 to 17 do
       for c:= 8 to 18 do
         begin
           if c>a then Inc(pca);
           if c>b then Inc(pcb);
           if (c>a) and (c>b) then Inc(pcab);
         end;

   writeln(pca/1331.0,pcb/1331.0,pcab/1331.0);
           
end.
6.280992031E-01 5.454545617E-01 4.214875996E-01
 
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Article:
Two sources said that the Department of Energy assessed in the intelligence report that it had "low confidence" the Covid-19 virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

Intelligence agencies can make assessments with either low, medium or high confidence. A low confidence assessment generally means that the information obtained is not reliable enough or is too fragmented to make a more definitive analytic judgment or that there is not enough information available to draw a more robust conclusion.

In 2021, the intelligence community declassified a report that showed four agencies in the intelligence community had assessed with low confidence that the virus likely jumped from animals to humans naturally in the wild, while one assessed with moderate confidence that the pandemic was the result of a laboratory accident.
 
"The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan," he said.
Then we get to "most likely a potential lab incident". That wording inspires no confidence in me, but I guess the report will give a talking point to those on the right that think that a problem can be solved merely by ascribing blame.
 
Probably worth stressing that "accidental escape from a lab" does not equal "genetically engineered war virus," as labs not involved in genetically mucking about with viruses in weapons research (and even those that are)would have samples of various natural viruses on hand, to be studied. Suck a virus leaking from a lab would be identical to it's brother crossing over from whatever reservoir species it hangs out in.

I mention it in passing here as I am seeing that false equivalence posted on some of the more hysteria-prone sites out there.
A virus in (or escaping from) a lab need not be modified in any way from the same virus in nature.
 
but I guess the report will give a talking point to those on the right that think that a problem can be solved merely by ascribing blame.
Agreed apart from the future tense "will give". From the outset there have been two distinct questions about COVID viz:
(1) How did it start? and
(2) How best to prevent or minmise its spreading impact?

Trying to assign blame does nothing to limit the impact. And the big mistakes in limiting impact have been made - they are past history. And some of the worst ones were not mistakes.
 
From the outset there have been two distinct questions about COVID viz:
(1) How did it start? and
(2) How best to prevent or minmise its spreading impact?

actually the really big question is "how do [or CAN] we prevent this, or worse, happening again in the future?". wet markets or lab accidents can potentially, kinda maybe, be prevented in the future.
 
actually the really big question is "how do [or CAN] we prevent this, or worse, happening again in the future?". wet markets or lab accidents can potentially, kinda maybe, be prevented in the future.
Agreed, with the note that since either would be possible, it would be wise to minimize the risks from either, whatever was to origin of this particular outbreak.
 
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